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Almost All the Books People Say Influenced Them Were Written for Children

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Recently, a status update ran around Facebook asking people to “List 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take more than a few minutes, and don’t think too hard. They do not have to be the ‘right’ books or great works of literature, just ones that have affected you in some way.” Facebook’s data scientists went though 130,000 responses and came up with a list of the 100 most common entries.

It should be noted that though the books may not have had to be the “right books” or “great works of literature,” human nature being what it is, most of the titles on the list are, in fact, the ‘right books,’ by which i mean, books you can proudly define yourself as a reader of. (“I am the type of person who was affected by To Kill A Mocking Bird.” “I am the type of person whose political opinions were formed by 1984.”) No one is listing Fifty Shades of Gray. They are listing books that they think say something complimentary about who they are as a person.

Almost all of these books are YA. They may not be in the YA section at Barnes & Noble, but children and adolescents are their primary audience. On the one hand, duh: People are most open to being affected by books when they’re young. Also, duh duh: Most people probably stop reading much fiction when they leave high school and are no longer required to. On the other hand, one of the books that probably affected me when I was growing up was the forgettable crime novel Silent Witness by Richard North Patterson. I read it when I was about 10 because my father was reading it and I wanted him to like me and for us to have something to talk about. That’s not to say you too were influenced by Silent Witness, but that, I think, that phenomenon—reading books aspirationally for social reasons—is pretty common and I’m surprised there aren’t more straightforward adult titles on this list.

Ben Dreyfuss is Mother Jones' editorial director for growth and strategy. He's done some other stuff, too. You can email him at bdreyfuss@motherjones.com. But you don't have to. But you can. But you really don't have to.